I Followed Her, and She Lead Me to You

Chapter 2

Nearly fifty five years of marital bliss and slightly odd family life passed quickly and before we knew it we had moved again started high school all over again. The family had become quick to accept Alice's visions of the future and use these to decide on the next destination, and this time it had been decided we would move to Forks, Washington. It was a gloomy place, less sunny days than almost anywhere inhabited, but that suited us best, and there was a reasonable high school and quite a large hospital for Carlisle to work in as the town served as one of the main regional centres of the area, along with the tourist town Port Angeles an hour or so away. Alice insisted we move here much more strongly than normally which suggested to me we were needed here for something big. Maybe to find our mates?

Alice and I hadn't spoke about our mates for most of the time we were married. We were content to live in the present, even if Alice could see the future. She firmly believed that the future needed to stay there in the future, and our heads needed to stay here in the present to enjoy living and to not wish our lives away. I was convinced she knew our mates awaited us in Forks. Alice further added to my suspicions when she asked me if we could be less flamboyant with our relationship while in Forks as it would make things easier in the near future. We could still act together, just not over-the-top together like Rose and Em. That meant keeping it to hand holding in public. And the occasional kiss. The unfortunate result of this was for the first month at Forks High there was a lot of gossip about whether we were together or not, and if there was anything going on between Alice and Edward as someone caught them holding hands once. But that was how Alice was, she held hands and hugged everyone and kissed everyone on the cheek. Well everyone in the family, we still didn't speak to humans unless absolutely necessary. I was good at distracting humans with my gift so they wouldn't feel the need to speak to us. A shot of fear or apprehension worked best or if I was feeling like being funny a shot of lust distracted them well enough.

A shot of lust worked well for distracting vampires too. Didn't feel like going shopping with Alice, push some lust on her and we would spend the day in our room instead. Didn't want to do something with Emmett, send him some lust and he went running to find Rose. But by far the funniest person to do this with was Edward. Shoot him some lust and he was likely to run away in embarrassment for a day or two fighting any natural urges he had. Stupid fucker. And half the time he was so caught up in his embarrassment he didn't even realise what I was doing. My gift could be fun.

"Could you stop doing that?" Edward growled, "I am trying to drive!"

"Doing what?"

"Projecting your emotions everywhere. I can handle most of them but the lust needs to stop." Oops, he probably didn't need to know what I was feeling towards his sister.

"No, I really don't." Edward and Alice had formed a very strong sibling relationship quickly after we found them, bonding over their gifts. They both understood and cherished the abilities, but found them annoying and uncontrollable often. At least I had good control over mine and was able to tune everything out most of the time. Unless people were feeling especially strong emotions or there were a lot of people around.

So here we were on a drizzly Tuesday morning, the 18th of January 2005, at Forks High School. Home of the Spartans. Whooooo! Nope. Not really, all their sports teams sucked ass and it was a bit of an embarrassment. I wish we were able to play on a team so we could show them what we could do, but instead we had to pretend to be average in gym and avoid drawing attention to our speed and strength. I mean I know why we had to but it irritated me.

Edward pulled his precious Volvo into the empty park next to Rose's car and we headed into school. Alice had insisted that we take two cars today instead of just one, so we were started at for even longer than normal. Until the truck thundered in. It had to be the loudest car I had ever heard, and I had been alive when cars were invented. The truck was massive and red and looked like an absolute rust bucket but you could see that it was well loved and had some work done on it and was once a great car. A long time ago but a great car none the less. It was also unfamiliar which meant it was the new girl's car. Alice was more excited about this new girl than she had been in a long time but she was hiding all of her visions really well, meaning none of us knew what it was about. Normally I could get her to talk about anything. It was a mystery which just evoked my usual sense of curiosity and made me want to figure it out. But at the same time I respected my wife's privacy to her own thoughts, something that Edward should learn to do. He was always in someone's head. He said he couldn't help it. Yeah right.

The day continued pretty normally until lunch time, with the exception of the buzz around the school about the new girl. The buzz was pleasant for me though because everyone was feeling happy, hopeful and curious, so that is what I felt. Unfortunately as I walked towards the cafeteria with Rose and Em they reminded me that these emotions lead me to looking stoned. This wouldn't be the first time humans thought I was stoned so it didn't bother me. Or maybe it was because of my great buzz I had going that I wasn't giving a fuck. Whatever.

We met Alice and Edward at the doors to the cafeteria and entered together. Em and Rose went first with his arm around her, then Alice and me holding hands, and finally Edward. We quickly grabbed some food and sat at our usual table in the back corner by the exit to the lawn by the parking lot. It was a convenient spot, it enabled us to be out of sight of most people so we didn't have to act so well at eating, and it also gave us an escape route should we need it.

Once we made our entrance I started to pay attention to the humans chatter.

"They always make such a big entrance, it's so annoying and kinda pretentious." Well yes, we did always make a big entrance, Rose and Emmett enjoyed the spotlight and I liked the emotions.

"Is he always stoned? That doesn't seem like normal behaviour for a rich doctor's kid." Really I wasn't the rich doctor's kid, nor a kid at all, I was physically about nineteen or twenty I think. And no, I'm not stoned. Emmett's voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

"Interesting conversation today, isn't it. All the gossip not only about the new girl, but also the resident stoner who has actually gotten stoned less times in his life than almost anyone else in the school." He chuckled.

"I have a reputation to keep up you know." I laughed before Edward interrupted us.

"New girls about to get our story."

What Jessica told her about us was a pretty good version of the story we planted in town but still edited enough that we seemed like freaks. The comments alluding to incest were hilarious because clearly she didn't understand what 'adopted' meant, but the comment about me looking like I was always in pain.

"Do I look like I am in pain a lot?"

"Not for a couple of years" Thanks Rose.

"No, really, since we have been practicing being around humans more you look more relaxed, but now you look a little too relaxed Jazz." Alice had forced me to practice being around humans more with her and because she was so excited about it of course I went along with it. At first it meant little adventures into different buildings with humans and longer shopping trips where we didn't hold our breath at all. Then we actually spoke to humans, and finally we would visit Carlisle in the hospital claiming he forgot something. Now I was coping really well and no one particularly felt the need to hang around me when we were near humans out of fear that I might snap. The only downside was I let my guard down to the point where the emotions flooded me sometimes and gave me the look of being stoned. Ah well, beggars can't be choosers and it wasn't the worst trade-off I could imagine.

Lunch moved along fairly quickly after that and we headed towards our next classes. Alice and I had gym and then Spanish together as we were both posing as juniors. Normally I would pose as Rose's twin and be in the same grade as her but this time we put out some bullshit story into the gossip circles about how I struggled in school a few years ago and had to repeat a year or something and how my twin sister overtook me academically. According to Alice I wanted to do my senior year with her and I learnt a long time ago to never bet against Alice, and why wouldn't I take the opportunity to have classes and graduate with my wife.

After the final bell rang we moved swiftly towards the parking lot and I was shocked to see Rose's red convertible was the only one of our cars there. Edward had taken off it seemed.

"Is this why you told us to bring two cars today?" I quietly asked my wife as we made our way to the car where our remaining brother and sister waited.

"Mmhmm, Edward almost exposed us, but luckily got it under control in time."

"Why the hell would he do that? He has the best control, after Carlisle."

"He found his singer, the new girl Bella, but after actually smelling her he reacted much worse than I saw. And I also saw that if he didn't meet her today in class he would meet her alone in town and wouldn't be able to control himself." Well that explained why Alice didn't tell him to stay away. One class of discomfort was much better than him eternally berating himself for killing an innocent girl.

Once we arrived home we found that Edward had taken Carlisle's car and gone north to Alaska for a while to clear his head and sort out what was happening with the girl. I was irritated that everyone was so worried about him and what he was going to decide. No one reacted like that when I came across a particularly good smelling human, or when Emmett did for that matter. When we did the only thoughts everyone had was if we needed to move, and how to keep us away from the human, how to prevent a murder. But goodie-two-shoes Eddie boy and his wellbeing were the only thoughts from most of the family. Of course Emmett and Rose were on a similar track to me. But that was mainly because Emmett had been in a similar position to me with how everyone reacted, and Rose just didn't want Edward to kill the girl because then we would be exposed and have to move to cover our tracks. Rose hated aspects of this life more than anyone else.